Integration between System Center Operations Manager and OMS Log Analytics

For those who are using System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) there is the possibility to extend the functionality of the product, enabling integration with Log Analytics. This allows you to benefit the potential of OMS to get a more efficient and complete strategy for monitoring your infrastructure . In this article we will analyze the steps that you must follow to enable this integration and we will parse the function of the architecture.

Before you enable this kind of integration you must ensure that you have one of the following supported versions of SCOM :

Operations Manager 2016.

Operations Manager 2012 R2 UR2 or higher.

Operations Manager 2012 SP1 UR6 or higher.

Also you should allow outgoing traffic, to the OMS cloud services, coming from monitor agents, from the Management Servers and from the SCOM console, directly or via an OMS Gateway.

The integration process is done by using the Operations Manager console according to few simple steps later reported:

Figure 1 – Start the registration process

Figure 2 — Select the OMS environment

Figure 3 – Start the authentication process

Figure 4 – Selection of the OMS workspace you plan to incorporate in SCOM

Figure 5 - Confirmation Screen Settings

Figure 6 -Final Confirmation

At the end of this configuration the connection is established towards the OMS workspace, but no data of SCOM agents connected to the SCOM management group is sent to Log Analytics. In order to collect the data from managed Operations Manager agents in Log Analytics is selectively required going to specify individual computer objects or a group that contains your Windows computer objects. The whole can be carried out directly from the branch Connection in the section Operations Management Suite:

Figure 7 – Selection of computer objects that you want to enable

At the end of this operation in the OMS portal it is possible to check the connection status of its Management Group and the number of connected servers:

Figure 8 - Information reported in the OMS portal after the integration

From the SCOM console you can check the status of the OMS connection browsing the section Operations Management Suite – Health State of the workspace Monitoring:

Figure 9 - Property Authentication service URI in the Health State of the Management Server

After establishing the connection between the SCOM infrastructure and the OMS workspace, the Management Server will start to receive configuration updates by OMS web services in the form of Management Packs, that include both the base MPs that those relating to solutions that have been enabled. Operations Manager carries out checks at regular intervals to check for updates for these Management Packs. This behavior is governed by these SCOM rules:

SystemCenter.Advisor.MPUpdate: handles updating of base MPs of OMS and by default runs every 12 hours.

SystemCenter.Advisor.Core.GetIntelligencePacksRule: handle upgrade of MPs related to enabled OMS solutions in the connected workspace and by default it is performed every five minutes.

Such behavior can be managed by changing the frequency or completely disabling updates (parameter Enabled) by configuring overrides of the above rules.

By accessing the workspace Administration and filtering the Management Pack for Advisor or Intelligence list the MPs downloaded and installed according to the solutions enabled in your OMS workspace:

Figure 10 – Management Packs list with name containing "Advisor"

Figure 11 – Management Packs list with name containing "Intelligence"

Figure 12 – List of Solutions installed on the OMS Workspace

As you can see for each installed OMS solution there is a corresponding Management Pack imported into the Operations Manager infrastructure.

At the end of this configuration also the communication-enabled monitor agents can send the required data from the solution directly to the OMS web service or the solution's data can be sent directly from the SCOM Management Server to the connected OMS workspace. Everything depends on the solution enabled and in no case this information are saved within the Operations Manager databasea (OperationsManager and OperationsManagerDW). If the Management Server lost the connectivity to the OMS web service data are maintained cached locally until the restart of the communication. In case the Management Server remain offline for an extended period the communication with OMS can be picked up by other Management servers in the same Management Group.

In order to control and regulate the internet connections of monitored systems and of Management Servers to the public OMS URL you can implement a OMS Gateway:

Figure 14 – Communications between SCOM and OMS infrastructure components in the presence of an OMS Gateway

In this way the only system that must be enabled to access to the Public URL of Operations Management Suite is the OMS Gateway and all others systems will point to this machine. To apply this type of configuration is necessary, after implementing the system with this role, specify the IP address of the OMS Gateway in the proxy server with the prefix http://.

If you need to enable only certain systems using the OMS Gateway going to act on the rule Advisor Proxy Setting Rule and create an Override for the health service object going to populate the parameter WebProxyAddress with the URL of the OMS Gateway.

Conclusions

Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS) is a solution based entirely on the cloud, in constant evolution and with new features being added and extended in rapid frequency. Through this integration you can then combine the speed and efficiency inherent in OMS in collecting, hold and analyze data, with the potential of Operations Manager. This allows you to continue using the existing SCOM infrastructure to monitor your environment, keeping any integration with IT Service Management solutions (ITSM) and benefit at the same time also the potential offered by Microsoft Operations Management Suite (OMS).